“I heard a lot of experts, and I read a lot,” was the excuse he recently gave to the Washington Post.

He added:

“I came to the conclusion myself that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that we’ve put a lot of it into the atmosphere and therefore we have contributed to the global warming that we’ve seen. And we’ve done it in really significant ways.”

But this was an unforced error which has needlessly hampered the Trump administration’s war on the Climate Industrial Complex.

It’s the kind of cynical positioning you might have expected from a RINO swamp appointee in either of the Bush administrations.

But it’s entirely inappropriate in the Trump era: there’s a war to be fought here and there’s really no space for fainthearts – not even when those fainthearts are Republican ex-congressmen with a distinguished past as US Navy fliers.

There are lots of things Bridenstine could have told the liberal media when quizzed about his views on climate change.

He could have pleaded the Fifth: “Look, my primary job is to restore NASA’s tarnished reputation as an institution for space exploration. So you’ll understand, I’m sure, if I don’t undermine this difficult task at so early a stage by answering loaded questions which have more to do with politics than NASA’s function.”

Better still, he could have said: “Glad you asked this question. And it’s one of those contentious issues I believe NASA can help solve. That’s why I’ll be encouraging NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies to work closely with any of the administration’s efforts to reassess the state of global warming science, so as to ensure that policies which affect all American taxpayers are based on evidence rather than dubious computer projections…”

What he didn’t need to do is throw the cause of skeptical science to the wolves.

Surrendering to a worthless opposition is bad enough. But what’s inexcusable is handing those scheming ingrates a weapon with which to beat the good people on your own side.

“I read a lot”?

What was Bridenstine thinking?

Does he seriously want to put out the message that the primary difference between the climate skeptic position and the climate alarmist position is that the latter group has done the most thorough reading, whereas the skeptics have just kind of made their stuff up from the top of their heads?

“Something is very wrong when Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt approve of Trump’s pick for NASA.”

and

“Bridenstine would fit in previous GOP administrations when you expect to have sellouts, but not in a Donald Trump Administration.”

I agree. And so, I think, will almost anyone who appreciates the magnitude of the task facing Donald Trump in draining the swamp and cleaning up the mess left by his predecessors, especially Obama.

The U.S. – nay the world – was just one election cycle away from leftist Armageddon. Trump arrived only just in time…

NASA, for example, had been reduced to a combination of Muslim-outreach program and chief promulgator of climate change alarmism, using dodgy statistics provided by its house green activists – first James Hansen, subsequently Gavin Schmidt – at NASA GISS.

It needed a completely new broom. And the man needed to wield that broom needed to be a fearless figure in the mold of Trump’s bravest and most able administrator, Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency.

I would go in even harder on what I see as Bridenstine’s treachery. But since old school NASA stalwarts say that in most other respects he is an excellent pick, perhaps we should give him the benefit of the doubt.

Apollo-era veteran Thomas Wysmuller tells Breitbart News Network:

I believe Jim Bridenstine was trying to diffuse what is essentially a non-mission-critical issue, as the Potomac estuary will not inundate NASA Headquarters anytime soon, or within anyone’s lifetime either. NASA is an agency far different than the one I worked in during the Apollo days, and the challenge Jim faces will be getting it back to a no-nonsense, measured, and validated data orientation. Catastrophic SLR and runaway temperature rise is part of the nonsense, and he will be very wise to systematically sidestep it for the short term.

In fact, he’s entered a proverbial hornet’s nest without a smoke pot and his best strategy will be to methodically let the NASA “hive” settle down. There is much to do there, Major Mission Critical Work (repeat three times), and having a climate-oriented disruption during his first few months is not in his, or the nation’s, best interest. My guess is that he intelligently quickly read the “lay of the land” and is acting accordingly.

He has his hands full and they need to rapidly wrap around things that really matter. Guess what: Climate isn’t one of them, but things like developing a rational manned space program and launch (& return) capability along with developing CIS Lunar Space most certainly is. Re-transitioning NASA back to its role as a fountainhead of technology development for the Nation and the World should be added to the list. Ending reliance on unpublished models for policy recommendations? That belongs there too!

There are more things that I won’t bother to list here – many more in fact, but one thing is abundantly clear: Of all the choices that President Trump could have made to run the Agency, he has chosen Jim Bridenstine brilliantly, and I see Jim Bridenstine’s star rising brightly as he returns NASA to greatness.

Let’s hope Wysmuller is right and that Bridenstine is able to prove himself in other areas.

But the fact remains that there was no excuse for Bridenstine’s frivolous, dishonorable and weasel-ish U-turn on man-made global warming.

When your president is up against a Climate Industrial Complex so mighty and all-encompassing it embraces everyone from the United Nations and the European Union to the Pope, the best thing you can do if you’re unable to stand strong is to keep your mouth shut.

Unfortunately, the ability to read, even “a lot” has no bearing on the ability to understand and make sense of what one reads. And if your agenda is anything other than the truth, then whatever you read is just to re-enforce your already-held belief.

I read a lot.
Playboy, etc.
Has anyone mentioned to this clown that the vast majority of CO2 in the atmosphere is from the oceans of the world.
Has any one mentioned to him that a “lot” of CO2 in the atmosphere is actually 0.04% OR LESS THAN 0.1%.

The move from nice person that critically thinks to Swamp Creature indeeds takes little time. I worked with various individuals in my career before and after their going to Washington, D.C. It was so amazing how quickly and dramatically they changed that we use to kid that someone had put a seedpod beside their chair while they were at lunch the first day.

Oklahoma-NASA has swamp-creatured up and is now benighted to lie for The Causes. You know, things like “. . . we zipped right through the Van Allen Belts” and. . . “the lunar has landed” and . . . “then they unloaded their space buggy”. Oki-nasa’s green house gas statement was breathtakingly embarrassing. And stupid. But he’ll fit right in with Hansen, et al.

His cross-state neighbor, on the other hand, has been ripping the guts out of Administrative “laws” (rules and regulations) issued by prior socialist/Marist EPA administrators and their administrations in a effort to illegally and unconstitutionally seize control of all private property in America. Land, water, you name it. For this, the financial puppeteers directed their paid swampers to haul this man before an inquisition in an effort to get him out of his office and Washington.

Now is not looking like a good time to be jumping on the warming bandwagon.

For the first time in nearly 40 years, we have just had 2 years in a row where the NH spring snow extent has been well above the trend line. This is important because if this becomes a longer term tread, then the climate warming meme is busted.

PS: I know that patrol pilots also are held to a high standard. I’m acquainted with a female Annapolis grad P-3 pilot who was court martialed for indiscretions not directly related to her aviation skill.

30 years of the threat of poverty at the hands of tax happy communists and this cluck face just now decides to do some reading on the subject? I’m scared what new subjects he might suddenly decide to read a lot about.

Good. At least we don’t have NASA and the EPA run by anti-science lunatics.

Well, they do have Willie Happer advising the president, too…imagine Anthony Watts working with the US government on science! (shudder)

“Unlike mainstream climate scientists, who publish primarily in peer reviewed journals, these critics typically employ a range of non-peer-reviewed outlets, ranging from blogs to the books we are examining. […] The general lack of peer review allows authors or editors of denial books to make inaccurate assertions that misrepresent the current state of climate science. Like the vast range of other non-peer-reviewed material produced by the denial community, book authors can make whatever claims they wish, no matter how scientifically unfounded.”

What do you denialists think you’ll get from reading those emails again? Some reassurance that nearly every scientist is wrong and just dishonest, and only Anthony Watts et al. know what they’re talking about? Or maybe the same thing Republicans got when they investigated Hillary Clinton’s email server the first 15 times?

I believed in your insane religion for about five minutes in 1998 when it reached my radar. 10 minuets after thought experiment and refreshing the facts of water vapor and sun and seeing the political angle I rejected it for good. Climate gate just told me what I already knew

The Republicans never really investigated Hillary’s private email server. It was the Obama controlled FBI and DOJ that botched the investigation, stymied congressional inquiries and which is what the upcoming IG report will be about. People may still be going to jail, but more likely for the many failed attempts at covering up her crimes.

The DoJ gave key witnesses immunity, then never questioned them. The fix was in from the gitgo.

But just to make sure, Bill had to visit the AG on her plane, hoping to remain incognito, in order to discuss the grandkids. Bill, let it be noted, gave the AG her first federal gummint job, setting her on the path to head honcho at DoJ.

Anyone else guilty of Hillary’s scrutiny breaches would be enjoying a sojourn at Club Fed. To say nothing of her collusion with Putin.

It was the only investigation in history in which all the major players were given offers of immunity in exchange for talking, however the agreements provided no punishment if the target decided not to give any useful information after the agreement was signed.

Once again, Black has to engage in lies.
Soon had no fuel industry financing.
The group that hired him got a small donation from a fuel company for a completely unrelated project years before Soon was hired.

Then again, this level of proof is all you’ve got for your belief that CO2 is a problem.

Has WUWT never addressed the fact that the “group” that hired Willie Soon (and Sallie Baulinas) was the American Petroleum Institute?

That CO2 causes warming isn’t a “belief”. It’s an undisputable scientific fact. As far as I can tell, even most of the deniers including Spencer, Christy, Soon, Lindzen, and even Watts don’t dispute this. They attempt to dispute that it causes a threat to humanity because of ideological diversion to climate action or enticing by funding from think tanks (like Heartland) that do.

They don’t “attempt” to dispute that warming is a threat. They show irrefutably that it isn’t, whether it has a human component or not.

The effect of doubling CO2 in the lab is about 1.2 degrees C of warming. In the real, complex climate system, it appears that the feedback effects of more CO2 are negative, rather than highly positive, as imagined without any evidence by IPCC.

Do you know how the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity “central value” of 3.0 degrees C per doubling was derived? It’s nothing more than a WAG, based upon two unsupported guesses in the 1970s, one by Jim “Venus Express” Hansen of 4.0 and the other by Manabe, a more rational scientist, of 2.0, the father of GCMs. Charney averaged them to 3.0, while recognizing a range of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C, thanks to an arbitrary MoE of 0.5 degree C. IPCC has been unable to improve upon this “estimate” in 40 years.

“… based upon two unsupported guesses …”
Worse than that, the primary objective for the ECS estimate found in AR1 was that it be large enough, with sufficient uncertainty, to justify the formation of the IPCC. The inevitable consequence has been a conflict of interest that’s been excising the science from climate science for over 3 decades and replacing it with conformance to a political narrative.

Actually, all of the people named above, including myself, dispute the worst case climate sensitivity scenarios. Yes CO2 causes warming, but nobody (including the 97% consensus dwellers) is absolutely certain just how much the atmosphere is sensitive to a doubling of CO2,…and haven’t been able to pin it down for 30+ years now. At the high end, possible disaster, at the low-end, possible benefits. See this:

So there you have it team. CO2 does cause warming, it is just a case of how much and how much damage. At the very least it would take a lot of head burying to not acknowledge that there is a fair chance the warming to come will be significant and damaging. There of course is a fair chance it wont….. but being intelligent animals wouldn’t it be prudent to continue to monitor and research going forward.
Which is why this article by Delingpole is so utterly ridiculous. To imply that Bridenstine should ignore the science as it evolves, or not allow his stance to change just because he is a Trump (a science primate) appointee, says so much more about Delingpole than it does about Bridenstine. If I had a dollar for every time I have read here that alarmists never change despite the facts, I’d be a rich man. Well here is a guy who has done that, and he is vilified. Anyway Mr Watts agrees with him, he just doesn’t share his level of worry for the future, so what’s all the fuss?

The precautionary principle is for those who have no confidence in their ability to understand risk. The fuss is about the IPCC’s inane claims relative to the ground truth. The IPCC claims an effect that may be problematic, so we need to spend trillions to mitigate it just in case and to feel better about ourselves we need to send trillions more to the developing world out of guilt because our success came from exploiting fossil fuels which they can no longer do without destroying the planet. The ground truth is that the effect on the temperature is so small, the minor warming in the coldest climates would be nothing but beneficial, agriculture would benefit significantly, there are centuries of supply that the developed world is free to use, not a single dime of mitigation is required and there’s an outside chance we could delay the onset of the next ice age by as much as a decade.

In the grand scheme of things 1C is nothing, especially when reconstructed from ambiguously adjusted data and as compared to historical variability. Besides, what about the >1C drop that led into the LIA. As far as I can tell, we’re just getting back to where we were before the LIA. Why is this so dangerous?

Your problem is that you see a tiny change and extrapolate it forever. The climate system with known periodic, quasi-periodic and chaotic variability around a mean doesn’t work that way. Linearizing a phantom trend in such a response is about as valid as linearizing the 1/T^3 dependence of the sensitivity on the temperature.

Like most catastrophists, Black believes in doubling down when caught in a lie.
Every single fact shows that higher CO2 levels are not a threat to humanity. If it was, life on earth would have ended back when CO2 levels were in the 5000 to 7000ppm levels. Instead life thrived.

Catastrophic anthropogenic climate alarmism was already recognized by astute students of the issues long before the emails exposed the conspiracy beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Most scientists know that CACA is a crock. The 97% fabrication is a totally bogus Big Lie, perpetrated by the media. Some so-called “scientists” in government and academia perpetrate the ho@x to further their careers and agendas, but real scientists and the best know it’s a sc@m.

Please produce a survey of the opinions of all the millions of scientists in the world to support your assertion that “nearly every” one believes that humans are or will produce dangerous global warming or climate change.

There is not a shred of evidence that humans are causing catastrophic “climate change”. We have had local effects on humidity and temperature, but globally, not so much. As in not at all.

The GCMs are clearly unskilled, not surprising since they make unphysical assumptions. So far the only demonstrable effect of having more plant food in the air has been significant greening of the planet.

Earth cooled dramatically from the ’40s to the ’70s, despite rising CO2. After the PDO flipped in 1977, it warmed slightly for about 20 years, then stayed flat, but for the super El Nino of 2016. Since then, it has resumed cooling. Hence, there is no correlation between CO2 and global temperature. Clearly, feedbacks to whatever GHE actually exists are negative.

Paul, it is understandable that any well-intentioned human would be concerned if catastrophic climate change were inevitable, and certainly worse if it was the fault of humanity. I can appreciate your angst. What is not appreciated is when someone employs logical fallacies, especially ad hominem attacks, evidence by your use of the term “denier”. It has no place in polite discourse where two opposing parties are dedicated to the truth, regardless of each parties initial position. We may be able to learn that some of our facts are wrong and require further examination. Both sides of nearly every debate typically have something they don’t get exactly correct.

I am genuinely interested to understand what you mean by the term denier.
Do you mean denying the climate changes?
Denying that the climate has warmed for at least the past 165 years?
Denying that humans influence climate?
Or do you mean denying that humans, by Combusting oil and gas are there primary driver of catastrophic global warming?
Is there a potential definition I missed?

I think once we can discover exactly what you mean, then we can approach polite discourse

The emails+ (HarryReadme) they tried to hide from FOIA request are just the tip of the iceberg.
Ask Mann for his UVa or even Penn State emails that have to do with “The Cause”.
Felix has it right.

As the UAE emails show, peer review has been perverted to enforce a false consensus. Climate science is thoroughly corrupt. Climate science is to real climatology as computer games are to sports.

PS You used the “D” word. Do I “deny” that “The Cause” is being honest and ethical?
HELL YES!
“The Cause” is politics and profit, not science.

PPS Hillary’s emails and email server? The evidence that Obama’s DOJ/FBI could only see on condition they destroy the evidence? Wikileaks is the closest we’ve come to seeing what really went on? (Reminds me of Climategate)

Funny how outright admissions of corruption don’t matter, because we’ve known about it for decades.
As to Hillary’s server, the FBI statement concluded that she had committed multiple felonies, but the Obama plant took the decision out of the hands of the field agents and declared that since she didn’t mean to break the law, she couldn’t be prosecuted.

“At least we don’t have NASA and the EPA run by anti-science lunatics.”

You mean people like Gavin Schmidt? He denies the applicability of first principles physics as a method to describe how the steady state response (average temperature) varies in response to minor changes to the system (increasing atmospheric co2).

As Hansen’s chief propagandist running the real climate web site, he and his minions regularly denied first principles physics like all the LAWS of thermodynamics and the Stefan-Boltzmann LAW. They all fail to reason that you can’t make up fake science like massive positive feedback to produce results that otherwise defy these LAWS of physics. He actually did such a good job at promoting the LAW defying lies, which his boss had a large part in establishing, he was hand picked to succeed him as the new boss.

As I see it, Schmidt has unwittingly picked up the mantle of Hansen’s scorched earth revenge for having been called a lunatic by both the Reagan and first Bush administrations for his chicken little proclamations of doom.

It was in response to my posts to Real Climate many years ago when I questioned the orthodoxy and showed how the high sensitivity being claimed by the IPCC violated both the SB Law and COE. Basically, from then on, any post I made went into the moderating queue and never came out. He’s definitely afraid of the truth.

Any paper that claims or presumes a climate sensitivity factor greater than about 0.37C per W/m^2 denies COE by default. Since this covers pretty much everything written by both, you can look up these papers yourself.

It’s not. It’s the same, on a Joule by Joule basis for all ‘forcing’. Of course, like most in the alarmist camp, you’re seriously confused by considering CO2 a forcing influence. Only the Sun is a true forcing influence, the test being if you take it away, the system is no longer being forced. When the IPCC says doubling CO2 is 3.7 W/m^2 of forcing, what they are really saying is that doubling CO2 is EQUIVALENT to 3.7 W/m^2 more solar forcing while keeping the system (CO2 concentrations) constant.

It is low for CO2, because CO2 is all but saturated. Adding more has very little impact.
If the sensitivity to CO2 was high, life on earth would have ended long ago when CO2 levels were up neat 7000ppm.

Well, this is progress, at least you understand that there is a controversy and that it is all about the magnitude of the ECS.

Unless like Schmidt, you deny the applicability of the Stefan-Boltzmann LAW, the nominal 0.8C increase arising from 1 W/m^2 of forcing increases the surface emissions by 4.3 W/m^2. If the surface is not receiving 4.3 W/m^2 more than it was prior to the forcing increase, it will cool, thus the 3.3 W/m^2 in excess of the forcing must be coming from some place in order to maintain the steady state increase in the average. Why don’t you take a crack at explaining where this power is coming from.

As I have already said, anyone who accepts an ECS factor greater than 0.37 C per W/m^2 is either denying COE, the SB Law or both. Now, answer the question, what is the origin of the 3.3 W/m^2 in excess of the forcing that sustains the 0.8C rise said to arise from only 1 W/m^2 of forcing.

OK. So why does the definition of forcing claim that 1 W/m^2 of post albedo solar input has the same influence on the surface temperature as 1 W/m^2 of incremental absorption of surface emissions by the atmosphere? Doesn’t seem like they’re doing a good job to me …

Considering that the Earth behaves in a manner EQUIVALENT to a gray body with an emissivity of about (255K/288K)^4=0.62, the sensitivity is given EXACTLY by dT/dF=1/(4*0.62*o*T^3)=0.3K per W/m^2, where o is the SB constant. Considering the equivalent forcing from doubling CO2 (per the IPCC) to be 3.7 W/m^2 and multiplying by 0.298K per W/m^2 results in a temperature increase of 3.7*0.298=1.1C per W/m^2. The primary error is to consider 0.3C per W/m^2 as the ‘pre feedback’ ECS and that positive feedback increases this all the way up to 0.8C. It should be clear to anyone with basic arithmetic skills that 0.3C per W/m^2 is the current long term average sensitivity (dT/dF) after all feedbacks, positive, negative, known and unknown have had their effect on all of the incident forcing.

Of course we can test that. It has been tested up the ying yang. It’s elementary biochemistry.

C3 plants grow much more under elevated CO2, from 800 to 1200 ppm. Greenhouses keep CO2 at 1000 to 1300 ppm.

CO2 has been higher than 250 ppm repeatedly in human history. It was at least 330 ppm during the Eemian, the last interglacial, when there were not only modern humans but Neanderthals and Denisovans. Our Pliocene and Miocene ancestors enjoyed even higher levels of the vital plant food.

In cities and especially indoors, it can get up to 20,000 ppm. Human breath contains 40,000 ppm.

I’ve read your comments Paul. I’m going to wager you never studied a hard science based in mathematics and that you are less than 30 years old. I’m finding it difficult to fathom a scenario where someone could be so intransigent and have lived longer.

Additionally, as an outside observer (politically speaking- as I’m for voluntary societies), i.e., NOT into party politics, this much is clear:
The sources you ingest are clearly Vox, guardian, HuffPo, NYT, intercept, and whatever other SJW, moral relativistic trash passes for “news’ these days and all major networks minus Fox, Granted, I would wager there are many on here who tow the Republican party line and are just as guilty as group think when it comes to the false dialectic, but regarding the science…you are outmatched. You are outmatched because you clearly lack cognitive skills necessary to employ logic and reason in your life. Thinking critically is not your strong suit. You are parroting propaganda that fools the unthinking mind. If you are not yet 30 there is hope, if you are near 40…just hang it up bud, you’re lost in the wilderness with a broken compass

All of the evidence supports a low sensitivity. In fact Lindzen, Soon, et al are alarmist in their predictions because they assume for the purposes of their analysis that all of the warming over the last 100 years was due to CO2. Since that is clearly false, the actual sensitivity is even less than what they have published.

There were no land plants or animals at all during the Cambrian. Indeed, the closest thing to plants even in the seas were algae.

The definition of “plant” is fungible. In the old, Linnaean, strict sense, it included only the Kingdom Plantae, ie multicellular land plants in the clade Embryophyta. The recognition that this classification was paraphyletic has led to the inclusion of green algae and freshwater stoneworts in a broader Kingdom Viridiplantae, the “green plants”. Plants in the broadest sense include photosynthesizing eukaryotes such as red algae and glaucophytes, a small group of freshwater unicellular algae, all placed together with the “green plants” in the clade Archaeplastida.

The claimed sensitivity already predicts a surface temperature close to the boiling point of water. The nominal increase claimed to arise from 1 W/m^2 of forcing is 0.8C and increasing the temperature from 288K to 288.8K increases surface emissions by 4.3 W/m^2. Since in a previous comment, Paul Black already seemed to understand that all Joules are equivalent, therefore, each of the 240 W/m^2 of incident energy from the Sun must also produce 4.3 W/m^2 of emissions at the surface resulting in 1032 W/m^2 of emissions corresponding to a temperature about 94C. If the first doubling of CO2 causes a 3C rise, the second will take us up to 100C and boil water. Do you think Paul Black will recognize this as a falsification test of the absurdly high sensitivity claimed by the IPCC and its self serving consensus?

I’m pretty young and still getting acquainted with the science so I’ve largely tried to avoid blogs like WUWT or SkepticalScience and just read scientific papers and theory. Where do your numbers for 0.8C for 1 W/m^2 and 4.3 W/m^2 come from?

Michael,
The 0.8C per W/m^2 sensitivity factor comes directly from the IPCC AR’s. The AR’s also report that doubling CO2 is EQUIVALENT to 3.7 W/m^2 more solar forcing, keeping CO2 concentrations constant. Multiply 3.7 times 0.8 and you get the 3C said to be the nominal sensitivity to doubling CO2. Apply the uncertainty of 0.4C per W/m^2 and the range becomes 3C +/- 1.5C.

It’s far too easy to be confused, as the ‘consensus’ applies many levels of indirection designed to obfuscate the obvious COE violations by first translating the mostly linear physical sensitivity of surface emissions to forcing into a non linear sensitivity factor of temperature to forcing and then translate this into an even more nonlinear sensitivity to doubling CO2 and then bury the uncertainty plus more in the various RCP scenarios.

“Paul Black already seemed to understand that all Joules are equivalent, therefore, each of the 240 W/m^2 of incident energy from the Sun must also produce 4.3 W/m^2 of emissions at the surface resulting in 1032 W/m^2 of emissions corresponding to a temperature about 94C.”

No, that is a nonsense argument. Sensitivity is how much heating you get for each 1 Wm⁻² added. 94°C is what you would get from adding 240 Wm⁻² to the existing 240 Wm⁻². If you try to calculate what should have happened if the 240Wm⁻² was added to zero (to get to where we are), the temperature would be far less. In fact very cold, but there are all sorts of non-linearities there (to 0K), notably S-B.

No. COE dictates that the ‘incremental gain’ which the IPCC incorrectly refers to as the ‘sensitivity’ and the absolute gain must be the same in the energy domain, i.e. power out is linear to power in. In other words each input Joule contributes equally to each output Joule. Considering the absolute and incremental gains to be different is itself a violation of COE.

No doubt you’re confused by the assumption of approximate linearity between power and temperature which isn’t even approximately true over the range of T found on the planet. However; the relationship between power emitted by the surface and power emitted by the planet is nearly perfectly linear across all T where the average emissions into space above a spot on the planet is about 0.62 times the the BB emissions at its average temperature. The sensitivity is given exactly by 1/(4eoT^3), where T is the average temp of the surface, o is the SB constant and e is the ratio between the BB emissions of the surface at T and the emissions of the planet, i.e. (255K/288K)^4 = 0.62.

I’ve shown the data supporting this many, many times and the data even originates from GISS. Why is this so hard to accept? The SB LAW with an emissivity of 0.62 predicts the relationship between the emissions of the planet and the surface temperature with a very high degree of certainty. Y is the surface temp, X is the planet emissions and each little dot represents 1 month of average data for each 2.5 degree slice of the planet over 3 decades of measurements. The larger dots are 3 decade averages for each slice. The green line is the SB LAW for e = 0.62. You simply can’t deny the predictive power of the SB LAW!

Isn’t the IPCC talking about a doubling when they talk about “sensitivity”? I also don’t quite get your graphic. It seems to say the IPCC suggests a linear relationship between greenhouse gas forcing and temperature.

As I said, the IPCC adds many layers of indirection and obfuscation between what’s actually controversial (the sensitivity factor) and what they claim the effect from doubling Co2 is. They do this to provide the wiggle room they need to support what the laws of physics can not. Assuming an ‘approximately’ linear relationship between forcing and temperature is one of the obfuscations. They can only get to the claimed effect by starting from their highly exaggerated, controversial and presumed approximately linear sensitivity factor, which is 0.8C +/- 0.4C per W/m^2. They keep pushing what they call the sensitivity to mean something farther and farther away from its physical basis in order to add depth to the confusion.

The graphic shows the monthly average relationships between the surface temperature and planet emissions across the surface plus the prediction of this based on applying the Stefan-Boltzmann Law (the green line). The blue line is the IPCC’s prediction of the same data plotted to the same scale. Rather than being a tangent to the actual relationship, they infer a linear slope passing through zero. This arises because when you differentiate a linear relationship to obtain the sensitivity, you get a constant, yet when you differentiate a T^4 relationship, you get something proportional to 4*T^3 which is definitely not a constant and even if you match the linear approximation to the actual average data, the factor of 4 is still missing from the derivative.

“the IPCC adds many layers of indirection and obfuscation between what’s actually controversial (the sensitivity factor) and what they claim the effect from doubling Co2 is.”

I thought those were the same thing?

I get the emissivity portion. Obviously black bodies (perfect emitters) are less sensitive to forcing than imperfect emitters like the Earth. But why does the Stefan-Boltzmann law only allow a maximum sensitivity of 0.3C per 1 W/m^2?

That’s what they want you to think. They don’t want people to know what the scientific basis of the controversy is, or even that there is one, so they can more easily fool people by manipulating emotions. What they really don’t want to get out is that the system is quite linear in the power domain and that each of the accumulated W/m^2 of solar forcing increases surface emissions by 1.6 W/m^2, while the claimed sensitivity requires the next W/m^2 of forcing to increase surface emissions by 4.3 W/m^2 in order to achieve the magic 0.8C increase. This is why the sensitivity factor is expressed as degrees per W/m^2 of forcing (a non physical linearized metric) as opposed to W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing (a linear metric supported by physics). After all, which sounds more plausible, 0.8C of temperature increase per W/m^2 of forcing or 4.3 W/m^2 of incremental surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing?

The SB Law, P = eoT^4, quantifies the equilibrium sensitivity of T with respect to P for any thermodynamic system as dT/dP = 1/(4eoT^3) at T equal to its average temperature. The common complaint is that the neither the surface or the planet is an ideal BB, which is certainly true, however; a non ideal BB is called a gray body and since there is no physics that can modify the exponent (T^4) in the SB Law, all of the non ideal attributes relative to the sensitivity can be rolled in to its equivalent emissivity, moreover; there’s no such thing as a non ideal gray body. Consequentially, the sensitivity factor for any thermodynamic system in equilibrium can be precisely established given its temperature and equivalent emissivity.

What happens in a physical sense as CO2 is increased, is that e decreases. When they say doubling CO2 is equivalent to 3.7 W/m^2 of forcing, what they mean is that the decrease in e arising from doubling CO2 has the same effect on the surface temperature as a 3.7 W/m^2 increase in P while keeping e constant.

I dont know what evidence he was reading. I would like to see it I have been looking for global warming for 30 years and haven’t found it yet? Is there a big tsunami headed my way and I don’t realize it? What a farce global warming is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He could take up residence in the Antarctic with the esteemed Paul Black.
They can tell each other fairy tales all day long.
Unfortunately, their presence will lower the average IQ of the Antarctic inhabitants. The Green fraternity might then object to their effect on penguins and seals.

Are you trying to say that it was a conspiracy among the swamp to position someone to run NASA who could effectively lie about their convictions in order to get the job and then in order to sell it, get the right people to complain?

The observation that CO2 is a ghg (greenhouse gas) is a shallow penetration of the science and means only that it has an absorb/emit band within the wavelength range of significant earth surface thermal radiation. Delving deeper, thermalization, and Quantum Mechanics calculations (Hitran does the math) demonstrate that, at low altitude, radiation absorbed by CO2 is essentially all immediately redirected to water vapor. CO2 does not now, never has, and never will have a significant effect on climate. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dc2oatYVQAAgUP8.jpg

Inasmuch as cyanobacteria, algae and plants have had a significant effect on Earth’s climate, IMO CO2 has had an impact, just not in the way imagined by CACA acolytes. Photosynthesis is a pretty big deal.

The issues are complicated. I find the instant condemnation oversimplistic. What he actually said in the above post before all the spin is exactly correct, Human (anthropogenic) fossil fuel consumption IS putting more unsequestered CO2 intomthe atmosphee. period. Question is, so what?
One answer is, ~35% of all the atmospheric CO2 AGW rise is since 2000 based on the 1958 Keeling curve—-yet except for the 2015-16 El Nino, now cooled, there is no warming. Duhoh!

I agree that, feeling generous, it is possible to interpret his words as being “diplomatic”. But I didn’t think he was appointed to be “diplomatic” towards the entrenched global-warming crazies. That is not the starting point in a negotiation that Donald Trump should be pleased with. He is their boss, not applying for a job at NASA.

What he actually said–before all the spin–is exactly correct?
That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.

quote:
=====
“I came to the conclusion myself that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that we’ve put a lot of it into the atmosphere and therefore we have contributed to the global warming that we’ve seen. And we’ve done it in really significant ways.”
-Jim Bridenstine, 2018
=====

“Mr. Speaker,
Global temperatures stopped rising 10 years ago.
Global temperature changes, when they exist, correlate with sun output and ocean cycles.
During the Medieval Warm Period from 800-1300AD, long before cars, power plants or the industrial revolution, temperatures were warmer than today. During the Little Ice Age from 1300-1900AD, temperatures were cooler. Neither of these periods were caused by any human activity.
Even climate change alarmists admit that the number of hurricanes hitting the US, and the number of tornado touchdowns have been on a slow decline for over 100 years. But here’s what we absolutely know: we know that Oklahoma will have tornadoes when the cold jet stream meets the warm Gulf air. And we also know that this President spends 30 times as much money on on global warming research than weather forecasting and warning.
For this gross misallocation, the people of Oklahoma are ready to accept the President’s apology. And I intend to submit legislation to fix this.”
-Jim Bridenstine, 2013
=====

The ONLY thing one needs to know [and appreciate] about this guy is that he was a “successful” multi-term USA Congressman; which means:

[a] he knows ALL the important BIG DOLLAR lobbyists … led prominently by the enviro-whackos;
[b] honesty in the DC swamp, except for patriots and fools, is of NO VALUE; and,
[c] he is well-versed at screwing freedom-loving America.

PS: Who nominated, for this position, this guy? Was he asked, specifically about AGW opinions, during his Senatorial confirmation hearings.

Unfortunately, NASA is pretty much irrelevant at this point. They’re currently building the most expensive rocket the world has ever seen, which was supposed to be a cheap-and-cheerful design because it reused Shuttle technology but has dragged out for a decade and will cost billions of dollars every time it flies. Meanwhile, SpaceX is slashing the cost to orbit to the point where there’ll be no justification whatsoever to launch anything on the Senate Launch System if it ever does fly.

And let’s not forget the JWST, which is more than a decade late and nearly ten billion dollars over-budget. It’s about the only payload that could afford an SLS launch without really noticing it in the budget.

The best things they’ve done in the last twenty years were helping Musk get SpaceX off the ground, and the planetary probes that will be pointless soon, if Musk and Bezos put people there instead.

1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record. The rate of change dCO2/dt vs. temperature plot follows:

10. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society. When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.

A. RE POINT #1 ABOVE: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ~9-MONTH CO2 LAG AND THE AVERAGE ~36-MONTH TEMPERATURE CYCLE IN THE EQUATORIAL PACIFIC.

Introduction:

I proved in January 2008 that the rate-of-change dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with global atmospheric temperature, and its integral the atmospheric CO2 trend lags temperature by ~9 months.http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
– See Figures 1 and 3

The integral of a sine curve lags the sine curve by 90 degrees, which equals 1/4 of the 360 degree full cycle.

CO2 lags temperature by about 9 months, therefore this total cycle time should be about 4×9 = 36 months.

Equatorial average air temperature and humidity follow Equatorial Pacific Ocean temperature – about 3 months after the Nino34 SST Anomaly and about 5 months after the East Equatorial Upper Ocean Temperature Anomaly.

Global average air temperature follows Equatorial average air temperature and humidity about 1 month later – about 4 months after the Nino34 SST Anomaly and about 6 months after the East Equatorial Upper Ocean Temperature Anomaly.

You’re incapable of defending your position, Steve. So is Zeke Hausfather and so is Rich Muller.

To be charitable, you can be excused because you’re incompetent, even if insistent. However, those among your group who are not incompetent (if any) are lying.

You people are guilty of the worst abuse of science, ever. You and your partners in crime are guilty of the excess winter deaths due to fuel poverty, as benighted politicians follow your lead. Be it on your head.

What he didn’t need to do is throw the cause of skeptical science to the wolves.

He didn’t throw anything to the wolves. I am skeptical and I fully agree with what he said. And with what he didn’t say too. He for sure didn’t talk about climate sensitivity (which can be very low while still accepting that the majority of the warming since 1950b could have been caused by us) nor about believing anything close to the climate models predictions about the future, nor did he say that climate change is a problem, let alone “the most important” one. He gave away to journalists the most that could be given to let the case rest. I think he did it well.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the majority of warming since the 1950s has been caused by us, and all the evidence in the world against that unsupported conjecture.

For starters, the world cooled dramatically from the 1940s to the 1970s, all the while CO2 was increasing. Then the PDO flipped, and we enjoyed mild warming for over 20 years, until the super El Nino of 1999. Then Earth’s temperature at best stayed flat until the super El Nino of 2016. Since then, it has resumed cooling.

Where is the man-made CO2 signature in those observations of physical reality?

I agree that there is no proof of the +50%, however it is perfectly possible and there is no definitive proof against it either. I feel about that sentence a bit like I feel when discussing NASA GISS temperatures. I don’t necesarily believe them, there’s a lot of messing and adjusting of historical data, always cooling the past, but whether they are right or they exagerate too much is not an important point worth the effort of fighting it. Temperatures can be what GISS claim that they are and still Global Warming be a no-problem. Human contribution percentage can be above 50% and still Global Warming be a no-problem. Let’s admit them for the sake of the argument and to avoid some nasty name-calling and concentrate on the actual critical points: Global Warming is still quite small and mostly beneficial. None of the fatal consequences that alarmists claim that will come can actually be detected yet in the historical data, except for increasingly bad heat waves, which come together with decreasingly bad cold waves.

meteorologist in research wrote:
“If the temperature of the planet goes down for a statistically meaningful amount of time then AGW will be falsified.”

Agreed m-i-r, but this has already happened, when Earth cooled from ~1940 to ~1977, even as atmospheric CO2 accelerated, so the CAGW hypo is already falsified.

The CAGW hypo is also falsified as follows:
The upper-bound estimate of Transient Climate Sensitivity of ~1C/(2xCO2) by Christy and McNider (2017) is highly credible for the satellite era from ~1979 to mid-2017. This upper bound was calculated assuming (conservatively, for the sake of simplicity and clarity) that ALL the observed warming in the satellite era was due to increasing atmospheric CO2. This maximum climate sensitivity is so low that there is NO credible global warming crisis.https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/2017_christy_mcnider-1.pdf

I have searched and found NO credible evidence that catastrophic human-made global warming exists in reality. None!

Incidentally, using the same assumptions as Christy and McNider, the TCS for the period ~1940 to ~1977 is about MINUS 1C/(2xCO2).

Furthermore, I proved in 2008 that the velocity dCO2/dt changes contemporaneously with global temperature, and its integral atmospheric CO2 changes ~9 months later. This clear signal can only exist if TCS is very small. See also Humlum et al (2013) for a similar observation.

Practically speaking, if TCS exists at all in significance, it must be very low, probably a positive number less than 0.5C/(2xCO2), or even lower.

In summary, the catastrophic human-made global warming crisis has already been disproved.

Yes I see your point.
It’s like a statement carefully worded to appease but doesn’t really admit much.
And also he doesn’t talk about actions that need to be taken, which is what really counts.
But the problem is he has stated that

Maybe a congressional committee should ask him what he’s read, and wt arguments have been put to him, that have changed his views. Then those authors and advisors should be interrogated, along with their critics.

As far as I know he is looking to actually sell the ISS to private buyers! And with private manned launches way behind, NASA will pay Russia to run the ISS, all of it. Trump want’s something bigger than this, back to the Moon. So far all the big projects are being sliced up by his Wall Street advisor. The 3 Trillion infrastructure plan he promised for example. He must fire Wall Street. His promised Glass-Steagall, at the immanent crash now looming would do just that. Then NASA can get a real mission, again. Until then we will get frivolous fidgeting.

The only reason ‘private manned launches’ aren’t launching yet is because NASA keeps demanding much higher levels of safety than Soyuz or the Shuttle. They’d rather launch astronauts on an antique Soviet rocket than a modern American rocket. If manned launches were actually considered important, SpaceX could have been doing them several years ago.

I read a lot too. But more importantly I watch what happens in the atmosphere. Mr. Bridenstine would do well to set aside the papers, walk away from the computer screen, and just stand outside and watch a thunderstorm. That’s what happens to heat. Blasted into space.

I still am trying to understand why NASA even has a climate group in GISS. Atmospheric studies should be the mission of NOAA. The only atmospheric properties NASA needs to understand is those affecting the flight of aircraft and spacecraft when in the atmosphere. NASA has the mission of making sure NOAA’s space-based sensors and experiments get into the correct orbit or sub-orbital trajectory. If I were the Pres. I’d tell the NASA head to ship the whole lot of GISS climate scientists off to NOAA, and give the NOAA administrator orders to keep his total headcount at the same level – lay off anyone in a duplicate job.

CAGW-believers care not a whit about facts and science. Their goal is to advance the social objective of redistribution of wealth under the mantra of the ends justify the means. An increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is deemed to cause a significant increase in global temperature, a priori. Serious debate is rejected as a pointless exercise.

The rate of increase (first derivative) of the global mean temperature trend-line equation (green curve) has been constant or steadily decreasing since October 2000. The HadCRUT4 temperature anomaly has decreased by nearly 44 percent from March 2016, the El Nino peak, to March 2018. The rate of change of the trend-line (red curve) will likely become negative within the next 20 years, reaching the lowest global mean trend-line temperature in almost 40 years. (draft ref: An-Analysis-of-the-Mean-Global-Temperature-in-2031 at http://www.uh.edu/nsm/earth-atmospheric/people/faculty/tom-bjorklund/) Lower temperatures could persist for decades.

In the article “Global atmospheric particle formation from CERN CLOUD measurements,” sciencemag.org, 49 authors concluded “Atmospheric aerosol nucleation has been studied for over 20 years, but the difficulty of performing laboratory nucleation-rate measurements close to atmospheric conditions means that global model simulations have not been directly based on experimental data….. The CERN CLOUD measurements are the most comprehensive laboratory measurements of aerosol nucleation rates so far achieved, and the only measurements under conditions equivalent to the free and upper troposphere.” (December 2, 2016, volume 354, Issue 6316) The article emphasizes the importance of replacing theoretical calculations in models with laboratory measurements.

Contrast these facts with, Bridenstine’s comments to NASA employees: “I also know that we, human beings, are contributing to it in a major way. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We’re putting it into the atmosphere in volumes that we haven’t seen, and that greenhouse gas is warming the planet. That is absolutely happening, and we are responsible for it,” he added. “NASA is the one agency on the face of the planet that has the most credibility to do the science necessary so that we can understand it better than ever before.” The comments have no substance.

Bridenstine seems to be in no mood to challenge orthodox thinking on climate change. NASA is marching in lock-step with the CAGW alarmists crowd and has no credibility on the subject of climate change. Bridenstine’s appointment as NASA Administrator appears to be a huge mistake.

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